Basescu reinstated despite Ponta campaign to unseat him
Low voter turnout invalidates referendum.
The return of Traian Basescu to the Cotroceni presidential palace in Bucharest last week capped a summer season that was tumultuous even by the standards of Romanian politics.
The unpopular Basescu, in office since 2004, was suspended by parliament’s centre-left majority early in July. But the referendum triggered by his suspension, held at the end of July, was boycotted by his former party, the opposition Democratic Liberal Party (PDL). Thus it failed to reach the 50% voter turnout required for it to be valid. In August, the constitutional court declared the referendum invalid, even though some 88% of those who did vote backed Basescu’s permanent removal.
The court’s ruling, and a subsequent decision by Romania’s parliament to reinstate Basescu, put an end to a campaign by Victor Ponta, Romania’s centre-left prime minister, to unseat the centre-right president. It failed, however, to assuage concerns across the European Union about the government’s commitment to the rule of law.
EU policymakers had been watching with growing apprehension as the prime minister’s heavy-handed campaign gathered speed throughout July. Ponta was summoned to Brussels, handed a catalogue of demands, and made to promise that he would uphold Romania’s legal provisions, for example by dropping his bid to scrap the 50% turnout requirement.
The failure to remove Basescu has left Ponta bruised. But the ruling Social Liberal Union (USL), made up of Ponta’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Liberal Party (NLP) of Senate speaker Crin Antonescu, still appears poised to win a parliamentary election scheduled for 9 December. A poll conducted in mid-August, after the failed referendum, had the USL at 57%, down from 67% in June but still far ahead of the PDL, which polled at 18% (and 23% in another poll, also in August).
The association with Basescu is expected to damage the PDL, as are the austerity measures imposed by a previous PDL-led government. Those measures prompted the defection of several parliamentarians, the fall of the government, and the appointment of Ponta as interim prime minister in May.
But Ponta has shown that he does not intend to concede victory to Ba?sescu, whose term ends in 2014, without a fight. Parliament delayed its endorsement of the constitutional court’s decision to annul the referendum result until Antonescu, acting as interim president, had sworn in Mona Pivniceru as the new justice minister. Pivniceru, while not a member of any party, is thought to be close to the Socialist establishment and would almost certainly have been vetoed by Basescu, whose approval is needed for ministerial appointments.
Ponta, who in the past described the constitutional judges as Basescu allies, called the court’s decision to annul the referendum “illegal, unjust and running counter to democratic rules”. Antonescu said the judges were “political officers” of Basescu’s.
Fact File
The president’s powers
Romania’s president sets the broad lines of foreign and defence policy and has the power to appoint Romania’s ambassadors abroad, its main judges and senior officials in the prosecution and anti-corruption bodies. The president can temporarily block legislation by refusing to sign it, returning it to the parliament for amendments.
The battle over appointments will continue in the coming weeks, when Pivniceru will propose her candidates for the post of chief prosecutor and head of the anti-corruption authority. Pivniceru is unlikely to propose candidates who are acceptable to Basescu. But blocking them would be risky for Basescu: the USL would then be able to claim that the president is lukewarm on the fight against corruption.
The European Commission will continue monitoring Romania’s domestic politics very closely. In July, at the height of Ponta’s campaign to remove Basescu, the Commission decided to extend its monitoring of Romania, which began when the country joined the EU together with Bulgaria in 2007 and was widely expected to end this summer. The Commission’s July report was scathing about the state of judicial reform and the fight against corruption in Romania, and contained a list of 30 actions that the Commission expects the government to undertake.
The fight between Ponta and Basescu has not only poisoned Ponta’s relations with his counterparts in the EU; it has also moved membership in the EU’s Schengen zone of borderless travel beyond Romania’s reach for the foreseeable future.
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The events of this summer set the scene not only for a contentious campaign ahead of December’s parliamentary election but also for another two years of infighting between Basescu, who cannot stand for re-election as president, and Ponta, who is expected to head the government that will be formed after the election.